If I Could Tell You About The World
by patchworkangel
Summary: Companion piece to When The Smoke Cleared: Ando's Mix. Someone's leaving. Someone's fighting. Someone's waiting. Two people are hoping.


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Disclaimer: I don't own Heroes. It's as true as a baboon's butt.

A/N: Wow, I actually forgot I still had this. I know that I promised I'd only post it after I posted my other pieces for the When The Smoke Clears series, but I've sort of run into a road-block with my writing. That's why I haven't done much of anything for what, four months? But lo and behold! I found this thing lying happily in my old collections. By now, I doubt there's any surprise left about the pairing, but it would be really nice if you tried reading it with a sense of obliviousness first. Better yet, if you could somehow read this, and Ando's Mix, both at once... kudos...

Anyway, ONWARDS!!!

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**If I Could Tell You About The World**

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To hold you was to hold a moment of sanity in my eternally warm, and blazing hands - even as they felt colder and number than ever. I relished those days, when you smiled at me and laughed musically in to my ears, youth long gone, but always, always somehow - someway - inside, in those eyes of yours. I mourned the day that I would be forced to leave you, but for what it was worth, I loved you for the days that I still had you.

I loved most the way your hands held mine. There was hesitance at first, I could tell, you were after all not accustomed to such oppurtunities. But with time you held them like the ideals you kept close to heart. Steely, strong, yet determined enough to let them go if the time was right. I recall tracing the marriage lines, late at night when the sirens were quiet and the screams were faded - they crossed with the lines of birth and longevity. I pointed out that one time that they were all made to be properous, but you would only smile and say that such lines were only of the past.

Destiny no longer had anything to do with it all.

Oh, how tragic it was that you were only a soul living its own life, until fate stepped in and decided you were to be a pawn in its game of foolishness and lucidity. I can't imagine what it was like for you, to see things you couldn't believe in, to live through events that should have never been seen by people like us. By innocence like yours. But if it was any consolation, that past brought you into my future, somewhere you admitted you'd never imagined to be, and now, couldn't imagine to be anywhere other than. Sometimes, you would whisper to me in the fiery dusk, you thanked all the tragedies you'd lived through, because they paved the way to the wonderful grace that was what we made, when the world stopped looking out for us, and we took it into our own hands to live with what happiness we could.

I loved you. I love you. I will always love you.

Strange, isn't it now, Claire? How those words seemed weightier, heavier, and deeper than when we both first said them to slip into each other's lives. You and your fight for the specials, I and my dream to be better than people like you. How could anyone suspect us as becoming more than colleagues in a fight against inequality? Better yet, how could anyone expect us, both so untrusting of the other, both led into this with the hope of discovering the liar underneath, both without anyone out there to hold on to us when we lost control - how could anyone expect us to be this close, breathing the same air, promising each other things that we never dared to say out loud, or at least under the watchful eyes of God. Here, with you, how do I describe it?

It feels like I'm happy. And after all that I've seen, happiness is a condiment we pay too much for so little of. And now, I taste it with every minute passed between us - how could I not? It's you, Claire. You are it.

We're still breathing, aren't we? Of course, you always are. I may be special now, but I'm not like you. I still bleed. Maybe not as much these days now that I can take care of myself, but I still can. I embrace my abilities for reasons just like that, but it must have been a let down for you when you realised that I wasn't different like you loved about me. I wanted to be special. I wanted to be better. But that never meant that I didn't trust you. I only wanted to be able to stand up for myself, because I learned the hard way that best friends aren't always there for each other. Believe me Claire, if I had met you in a different time, and a different place, I would have had it no other way. This was me.

Unfortunately, it's just sad that we only met after that version of me was stabbed in the back and betrayed by my own best friend. I could never forgive him for that, but deep inside I thank him for being what drove me into this direction that I thought I was clearminded enough to avoid. It was on this road that I met you, and I couldn't care less that my formerly best friend was dying from wounds you cannot even begin to describe, or that I could even begin to explain or apologise for, because I was happy with you. You and only you.

Claire, after reading all this, you probably think I'm just trying to be cute and loving with a tell-all confession in a letter, but I'm not. I'm telling you this because I need you to understand what I'm going to tell you next.

He's not dead. He survived. And he has the formula that would take it all away. I couldn't let him do that. No, I love you too much to let him do that. I've seen what the formula can do, and I need you to believe me when I say that stopping him would be the only way to save you, the world and everyone else.

Including the one inside you.

Claire, I know. Daphne told me. I never wanted to let that happen to you, but now that I know it has, I want us to have a real start. One where we decide where that life will go, without any restrictions. But what Hiro has is a formula that will disable your healing abilities. And I've seen what it does to others, Claire, and if I'm right, 'curing' you will kill you - because you've already died before. I would rip my heart out long before that happens. That's why I'm doing this. And that's why I asked them to give me what you have.

I can heal now, unbreakable like you. I need you to understand that to stop Hiro means I'll need to push my abilities to the edge, and that could mean burning up from within. Your blood will save me, I know it. Everyone knows that your ability was the best bet to take the formula away from Hiro. But I can't risk you being that close to something that could kill you, and not only you, but the both of you. So I did what I did. I asked them to make me like you. If anything, it means that I'll survive the burning within. But if Hiro's foolishness deals its last cards anyway, at least it'll be me who takes the fall. Not you. I'll swallow every last drop of that formula before it even gets a chance to touch you.

I'm sorry. I'm saying too much. I must sound like a rambling psycho by now.

I love you Claire, and I'd do anything for you. That's what I'm doing. Hiro's planning on releasing the formula from Yamagato Industries, ten pm tonight. I'll pick you up from your apartment at one. Don't be late. I got the last flight out.

Love, M---

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Claire shut her eyes and crushed the paper in her hands. What an idiot. How he still had time to write a lame-ass letter while the world was slowly going to hell was beyond her. Especially one that was two pages long.

She breathed deep and smoothed out the surface again for a hundredth time. His writing was neat, made with the same precision his mother tongue required. The faint watermark that read 'Primatech' on the bottom was barely seen against the runs in the ink that came to be from Claire's tears. Claire bit her lip as she remembered the week he spent in captivity, all because he betrayed his comrades and chose to not hurt his best friend. But then, his best friend turned his back on him, and he spent that week there for nothing - desperate to prove his innocence despite all the evidence that said otherwise. She had lost her faith in him... Until he returned again that night and gave her one last chance to feel loved again.

And this morning she woke up to find the letter on the dresser, under her favourite, German teddy bear, with an empty ring box beside it. When Claire opened the envelope, there was the letter, and an open plane ticket to god knows where would survive the impending disaster. She read the letter under the pale, dim light of dawn, and had been reading it over and over again, for the last three hours.

Claire finally held the letter against herself, against her stomach. He was probably halfway to Tokyo now. But this was not the time to lose faith in him again. He was going there to do his job, and he promised her that he would come back. He would. He had to. They... needed him here.

Claire stood up slowly and watched the sunrise from the apartment she and West shared. West. He was still at the Vatican, watching over his sister and her slow remission from those Company drugs. She was alone. No. He didn't make her feel alone. He made her feel whole and loved. She needed him, she needed him to come home.

As the sun rose higher and the New York she remembered came to life under the rays, Claire wondered if she could still pray to the God she had lost faith in before. Would He still take the time to at least hear her? Like an answer, she felt the oddest tingle in her abdomen, and a soft voice whispering 'I Love You' in her ear. She smiled.

I'll be waiting, Ando. I'll be waiting.

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_I'll pick you up from your apartment at one. Don't be late. I got the last flight out. _

**Love, Masahashi Ando.**


End file.
